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Impossible Quotes

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Impossible Quotes

“The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?”

ThinkingMenMadeIdeasSelfGovernmentPoliticalEnemyPrinciplesEconomyImpossibleKingsProveEssentialsArgumentLaborTradeSlaveBonesDisappearFinanceDestroyedChiefsContradictionFlatsPopeSubmissionMonopolyAdviseDespotismAbolishThink Of MeContentionFree TradeTradersOligarchySelf-governmentTariffsPolitical EconomyUsuryLabor And Capital
Author:Ezra Heywood
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“The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness - it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream.”

MenSelfDreamSeemsGoalQualityImpossibleTalentKeysDisciplineIntellectualAll ThingsCaughtLiftsAspirationOne ManMediocrityFormalSelf DisciplineCaught UpSimplestBrightnessFormal EducationImpossible Dream
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and intertwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally, I do not mean figuratively, but literally impossible for us to figure what the loss would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves.”

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Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“They said that the Negro had no initiative; that he was not a business man, but a laborer; that he had not the brain to engineer a corporation, to own and run ships; that he had no knowledge of navigation, therefore the proposition was impossible. Oh! ye of little faith. The Eternal has happened.”

MenLittlesSaidRunningBrainImpossibleHappenedEternalShipsCorporationsInitiativeEngineersThey SaidPropositionsLaborersNavigationBusiness ManLittle Faith
Book:The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers
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“The uncommon man has done the impossible and there has been that much more light in the world because of it. Children respond to heroes by thinking creatively and sometimes in breaking beyond the bounds of the impossible in their turn, and so becoming heroes themselves.”

ThinkingMenWorldChildrenHas BeensSometimesDoneLightTurnsImpossibleBecomingHeroBoundsUncommonCommon Man
Book:The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, and Two-Part Invention
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“In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology".”

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Author:Rachel Carson
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“Our feelings probably are not less strong at fifty than they were ten or fifteen years before; but they have changed their objects, and dwell on far different prospects. At five-and-thirty a man thinks of what his own existence is; when the maturity of age has grown into its autumn, he is wrapt up in that of others. The loss of wife or child then becomes more deplorable, as being impossible to repair; for no fresh connection can give us back the companion of our earlier years, nor a "new-sprung race" compensate for that, whose career we hoped to see run.”

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Book:Lodore
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“Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.”

MenHumansMatterSpiritDesireImpossibleIntellectualInfinitePropertyIntellectThirstMetaphysicalPhysical Things
Book:Approaches to God
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“Contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture from the past. If this is impossible, it has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation.”

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Author:Rudolf Bultmann
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“Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.”

MenNeedsNationsDarkRaceImpossibleWeakOvercomingIndiaHeavyFoolishDemonIdleDoomedExtinctionSaying NoInertiaLifeless
Author:Sri Aurobindo
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“Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.”

MenGivingFeelsBelieveReasonBeliefLevelsExistenceImpossibleSubjectsEffectsReaderPerceptionConsequencePhilosopherEvery ManSensesPerceiveReasoningSpeculationPeasantsInvincible
Book:The Works of Thomas Reid, D. D.: Now Fully Collected, with Selections from His Unpublished Letters
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“Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and... fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains.”

IfsMenBelieveMadeNightFatherImpossibleSeaLandMankindMountainWaveBeastHidingSurprisingSunlightMiraculousDolphinsZeusPasturesOlympianSalty
Author:Archilochus
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“It's impossible to say that live art enjoys any single status in the information age--there are versions of live art that are still primarily art-world phenomena, others that appeal to much broader audiences. The Burning Man festival is a case in point--an event featuring performance that is itself a performance, which partakes simultaneously of frontier mythology, a counter-cultural impulse, and popular cultural visibility.”

MenWorldArtStillsAgeEnjoyCasesAudienceImpossibleEventsInformationPerformancesMythologyVersionsBurningAppealsImpulseFestivalsFrontiersArt WorldInformation AgeVisibilitySingle StatusBurning Man
Author:Philip Auslander
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“All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.”

MenHumansSaidIdeasRealLawPoliticalUsedPoliticsEconomyIssuesImpossibleHuman NatureOrdinaryConsciousIdealsPropertyPossessionUsed To BeBeing TrueLiberalismEnterprisePrivate PropertyOrdinary ManAlterationsPolitical EconomyPrivate EnterpriseToo Good To Be True
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted right... Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible.”

MenReasonUseWisdomHandsPoliticsEconomyRightsImpossibleDutyAuthorityRefuseObligationGrantedLiberalismVoidRepresentativesCivil SocietyCoerce
Book:Encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI on atheistic communism: official Vatican text
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“If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.”

IfsMenDoeSoulReasonCharacterBodyBeliefImagineImpossibleAtheismSubjectsProveEvidenceIndependentPositive AtheismJustifiedDisbeliefScrapImpossible ThingsResidence
Book:Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays
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“And so, at least symbolically, the blood of Eve courses through each one of her daughters' veins. We are each associated with life; each subject to the impossible expectations and cruel projections of men; each fallen, blamed, and misunderstood; and each stubbornly vital to the process of bringing something new--perhaps something better--into this world...We are each an Eve.”

MenWorldCoursesProcessImpossibleBloodSubjectsThis WorldExpectationsDaughterFallenSomething NewVeinsMisunderstoodProjectionSomething Better
Book:A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband 'Master'
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“There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.”

MenWorldWayFirstsLastsThreePracticeImpossibleReturnUniversalRevengeEndeavorDespiseCensureThree Ways
Book:The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions
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“For war to man, like childbirth to women, is simplifying in its emotions and activities. All the real problems of life can be put aside while the one thing is done and little thought is needed to do it. ... His hatreds can be expressed without censure, he can let his emotions run free, he can behave as dramatically, as heroically as he likes, and no one laughs at him. It is almost impossible for a man to behave heroically in the cool and ordinary times of peace. But in war anything is allowed him, he is praised and applauded and made much of, as women are excused and allowed for in pregnancy.”

MenLittlesMadeWarRealDoneProblemRunningEmotionLaughingImpossibleOne ThingNeededActivityOrdinaryHatredLikesBehavePregnancyChildbirthReal ProblemsCensure
Author:Pearl S. Buck
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“How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the good and true; otherwise impossible, except as armed neutrality or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.”

MenHelpingHeavenFriendshipUnitedImpossibleFailingThousandTenCapableInfiniteLeagueSufficientMutualYieldHollowNeutralityMan United
Book:Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books
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“Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!”

IfsMenYearsMaySoulAgeImpossibleYouthSpringPrivilegeHeavyOur TimeSunshinePrimeWornPastorBreezeAlasSpringtimeMansionsMossBoyhood
Book:Tales and sketches
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“It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.”

MenWellsReasonShowsFeelingsMightImpossibleUnderstoodArgumentPressureFingersSpreadResistanceEnthusiasmDistinctionEndeavorCombatElude
Book:The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M. B.: Including a Variety of Pieces
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“Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him; but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.”

ThinkingMenKindMaySelfDoneCulturePayImpossibleWealthyInheritanceAcresKnowledge And Wisdom
Book:Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance
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“A man is commanding - a woman is demanding. A man is forceful - a woman is pushy. A man is uncompromising - a woman is a ball-breaker. A man is a perfectionist - a woman's a pain in the ass. He's assertive - she's aggressive. He strategizes - she manipulates. He shows leadership - she's controlling. He's committed - she's obsessed. He's persevering - she's relentless. He sticks to his guns - she's stubborn. If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult and impossible.”

IfsMenWantShowsPainDifficultImpossibleHe ManGunBallsSticksCommittedAssObsessedSexismAggressiveStubbornManipulateRelentlessPerfectionistWomen WantAssertiveUncompromisingPushy
Author:Barbra Streisand
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“In the wildest anarchy of man's insurgent appetites and sins there is still a reclaiming voice,--a voice which, even when in practice disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowledge to be the best, the highest principles of our nature.”

MenFeelsStillsMomentsVoiceSinPrinciplesPracticeImpossibleHighestConscienceRefuseObedienceAcknowledgeBeing The BestAnarchyAppetiteHomageInsurgentDisregarded
Book:On the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man by Thomas Chalmers
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